How much of your taxes went to the military last year? how much towards peace?

The National Priorities Project shows how the average Tulsan family is diverting $360 of their 2007 income tax dollars to buy military hardware, military services, military advertising, military recruiters, and to pay down war debt accumulated by the military during past wars. The situation is even worse in Oklahoma City, where the average family spent $561 of their 2007 income tax to buy such military-related things or to pay down the military's debt.

Just to clarify, the important figure is 42.2% of your federal income tax paid, according to the National Priorities Project. Other outfits say taxpayers spend 48% or even 51% of their taxes on military-related expenses, but we'll use the NPP figure here:

e.g. If you paid $3000 in federal taxes, then multiply this by .422 to determine how much you forked over to the Military-Industrial Complex, including the military's debts from past wars (also known as 'the hangover'), and socialized healthcare for veterans.

The answers won't be provided on TV anyway. According to this latest article available online, the Obama administration is NOT alleviating the war tax burden on the U.S. taxpayer.

"Budget Makes No ‘Sweeping Shift’ in Security Spending Yet"
By Miriam Pemberton and Suzanne Smith
Signals From President Obama's First Budget: National Priorities Project and the Institute for Policy Studies release an examination of the preliminary military and non-military security spending requests found in President Obama's Fiscal Year 2010 budget overview, released February 26, 2009.http://www.nationalpriorities.org/signals_from_president_obamas_fir...

Obama has requested more money for the Pentagon than the Bush administration ever did. Its request of $534 billion is $20 billion more than the amount Congress appropriated for FY 2009.

The total budget for engaging the world militarily now stands at $663.7 billion.

This means we’re spending 13 times more money engaging the rest of the world by military means than by any other means, such as diplomacy, peace negotiations, non-violent intervention, etc.,

This article puts it more bluntly, accusing Obama of breaking his campaign promises:

Eddlem writes: "Barack Obama’s budget seems to indicate that he will be increasing U.S. military involvement abroad, rather than the decrease he promised as a candidate. After all, if we’re reducing our deployments abroad, why would we need more people in the armed services?"

United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is initiating grassroots pressure to bring the military's budget down at least 25% by next year. They write:

"We will be launching a nationwide campaign demanding a 25% cut to the military budget by 2010. One key element of this effort will be a petition drive that will gather signatures for several months in every corner of the country. This project will include building the local, community groups that are the backbone of the peace and justice movement. By the time we are ready to present the petitions to the White House and Congress our movement will be stronger and more powerful. We are the change we have been waiting for; and we want to cut the military budget and provide detailed plans for how we can invest these funds back into our communities. This is an eminently realizable goal - 25% cut by 2010 - and we need to make it a reality. We need your help in exerting the needed pressure to make real cuts to the military budget"

Well, there's been no reduction in the military's budget as yet. In the meantime, consider this argument from a recent article from the libertarian website antiwar.com

The total estimated cost to the American taxpayer for our current wars is $3 trillion to $4 trillion through 2020 — plus an additional $1 trillion just to pay the interest on the money borrowed to fund war. Funding war by borrowing money is one of the devices politicians have devised to pay for war, particularly for unpopular wars. This means our children must pay tomorrow for the wars we are involved in today.

In the modern era, including Word War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and our present conflicts, the United States has funded its wars through debt, taxation, or inflation, or sometimes a combination of these methods. In each case, according to a recent report by the Institute for Peace and Justice, the result has been detrimental to the economy in the long run. In each case, the burden has fallen on the American taxpayers and the private sector through increased taxes, increased costs of goods, and shortages. In short, in each case the result has been a depressed civilian economy.

The report also found that excessive military spending can displace more productive nonmilitary outlays in investments in high-tech industries, education, or infrastructure. The crowding-out effects of disproportionate government spending on military functions can affect service delivery or infrastructure development, ultimately affecting long-term growth rates. In simpler terms, the more the government borrows and spends for war, the less the private sector is able to grow and prosper.

The Eisenhower Study Group at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies has compiled a comprehensive study of the human, economic, social, and political costs of war. It’s available online.

People across the country are planning to protest the use of tax dollars to fund war. In dozens of communities across the country, demonstrations are planned at IRS offices, federal buildings and weapons factories to protest ongoing massive U.S. government expenditures on drones, missiles and bombs. According to a new pie chart released by the War Resisters League, 47 percent of federal taxes goes toward war in some form or the other. To protest paying for lethal weapons, some Americans are taking a stand by personally refusing to fund the military. These tax resisters are risking jail time by withholding all or a portion of their federal income taxes, and instead redirecting the money to humanitarian efforts. We speak with Ed Hedemann of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. He has redirected the federal portion of his tax bill to nonprofits and humanitarian efforts for 40 years.

[excerpt only]

ED HEDEMANN: I refuse to pay 100 percent of my federal taxes, my federal income taxes. I pay Social Security, Medicare, state and local taxes, but none of the federal income taxes. But actually, in fact, I do pay them, just not to the IRS. I take the entire amount of money and reroute it to other organizations helping to build a better world rather than helping to kill people.

AMYGOODMAN: And what has the federal government responded?

ED HEDEMANN: Routinely I get letters, threatening letters from the IRS. They look for bank accounts. They look for property that I might own to seize. They look for salaries that I might have. I go out of my way to be uncollectible. I don’t have readily accessible bank accounts. I don’t have a salary. I’m self-employed. I have had salaries in the past. And I really don’t own any significant property. Now, the IRS has gone as far as to take me into federal district court. They did that in 1999 to get me to reveal sources of my assets, because the IRS has been unable to find anything significant to collect. I refused to give this information, and that was the end of it.

AMYGOODMAN: What did the judge do?

ED HEDEMANN: I said to the judge that, "Well, I’ve already paid my taxes to other organizations, not to the IRS. I cannot pay money to help kill people." And I didn’t want to incriminate myself by giving this information to the IRS, a potential criminal investigation. The judge ignored everything except for the latter part and said that I didn’t have to give the information to the IRS because I might incriminate myself.

AMYGOODMAN: On Friday, we spoke to Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, retired Catholic bishop of Detroit. He’s been a leading voice for peace, justice and civil rights. He explained why he also refuses to pay his taxes.

BISHOPTHOMASGUMBLETON: I feel a good portion of those taxes goes to our war budget, which is our so-called defense budget, but it’s really a war budget. It’s the largest of any nation in the world. And years ago, Pope Paul VI said the arms race—and that’s what we are doing with our defense budget—is, in itself, an act of aggression against the poor. Using that money for weapons and strategies to use them is taking money away from the poor and causing them to starve. We should be using our natural resources and our wealth to promote development and to promote justice in the world. When you have a world where there’s such a gap between the rich and the poor, and such huge numbers suffering because of that, the church has a real responsibility to use whatever income it can bring to—I mean, our nation has a responsibility to use its income to help development happen, because that’s the basis for peace.

The fastest growing bureaucracy, and now second-largest employer in the federal government, is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The argument in this article is that not only is DHS bloated, it doesn't even have any reason for being.

Cost skyrocketing: Homeland security agencies got about $20 billion in the 2002 budget. That rose to about $60 billion (PDF) this year.

"The department is responsible for some of the least cost-effective spending in the U.S. government. It’s time to admit that creating it was a mistake."

"Given that DHS spending is motivated by such an elusive threat, it’s no surprise a lot is wasted. The grants made by DHS to states and cities to improve preparedness are notorious for being distributed with little attention to either risk or effectiveness. ... the agency has routinely refused to carry out cost-benefit analyses on expensive and burdensome new procedures, including scanning every inbound shipping container or installing full-body scanners in airports—despite being specifically asked to do so by the GAO."

DHS "heaps largesse on a range of contractors, all of whom have an interest in hyping the threat of terror to ensure the money keeps flowing."

$75,000 for every American household spent on Iraq and Afghanistan occupations by the U.S. military

The $2 trillion Bush borrowed to pay for the wars accounted for roughly 20 per cent of the total amount added to the US national debt between 2001 and 2012. The US “has already paid $260 billion in interest on the war debt,” andfuture interest payments would amount to trillions of dollars. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid.

"The NSA’s rent, charged to every taxpayer living under its web of surveillance, comes out to an exorbitant $574 per year. If this is the price the federal government is charging American taxpayers to have their own privacy invaded, then I say the NSA’s rent is too damn high."

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People to come together to solve shared challenges at the grassroots level. This discussion forum is for events, plans, strategies and tactics to support sustainability and justice, including mutual aid and self-bootstrapping. Put your reviews of peace-promoting games and nonviolent disobedience training here as well.

Taxpayers can take stock of how the federal government spent their 2007 income tax dollars: over 42 percent went towards military spending, while education received just over 4 percent. The National Priorities Project shows how the average Tulsan family is diverting $360 of their 2007 income tax dollars to buy military hardware, military services, military advertising, military recruiters, and to pay down war debt accumulated by the military during past wars. The campaign for a Peace Tax in lieu of War Taxes is a nationwide campaign.